Typechecking for XML transformers

  • Authors:
  • Tova Milo;Dan Suciu;Victor Vianu

  • Affiliations:
  • Computer Science Department, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel;Department of Computer Science, University of Washington, 114 Sieg Hall, Box 352350, Seattle, WA;University of California at San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computer and System Sciences - Special issue on PODS 2000
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

We study the typechecking problem for XML (eXtensible Markup Language) transformers: given an XML transformation program and a DTD for the input XML documents, check whether every result of the program conforms to a specified output DTD. We model XML transformers using a novel device called a k-pebble transducer, that can express most queries without data-value joins in XML-QL, XSLT, and other XML query languages. Types are modeled by regular tree languages, a robust extension of DTDs. The main result of the paper is that typechecking for k-pebble transducers is decidable. Consequently, typechecking can be performed for a broad range of XML transformation languages, including XML-QL and a fragment of XSLT.